5/27/2007

Today’s ride was a new route that Gene called “No Tuna For Me”. It went up to Sunland, but then came back by a different route, completely avoiding La Tuna Canyon. I was a little skeptical about this, since I like La Tuna Canyon, but this turned out to be a pretty nice route.

We started out straight west, across Pasadena and Eagle Rock to Glendale. Then we took Kenneth across Glendale, which was nice. It has a lot less traffic than Glenoaks. When that ended, we got on Glenoaks and rode up into Sunland. That’s where we saw the hot rod roadster.

In Sunland, we took a right on Peoria and rode along the edge of the big landfill there. Fortunately, the wind was blowing the right way so we didn’t have to smell it. Then we took several small streets up through the hills. The area there has a very rural feel. Most of the houses had horses, and one had geese in the yard. Finally, we came out on Sunland Blvd by the 210 freeway.

Crossing the freeway, we turned off Sunland and took some small streets through Tujunga. That’s where Gaurav got a flat. We stopped to fix it, and while we were fixing it, a guy from across the street came out of his house carrying a floor pump. He said that he’s had to fix flats on the side of the road many times before, so he thought the pump could help us. And he was right. It was a very nice thing and helped us a lot.

We came out on Foothill Blvd, which we took for a short distance through the middle of Tujunga, and then we turned down Tujunga Canyon Road and from there it was all downhill into Montrose and our snack stop at Oven Fresh Bakery. We saw the Pasadena Triathlon Club across the street while we were there. They were in the middle of a long ride of their own.

After the snack stop, we headed back through La Cañada into Pasadena. Then we went down Arroyo and Lincoln to get back to Orange Grove, which brought us back to the park. At that point, I had 44 miles, so I rode out to Sierra Madre with Newton before turning around and heading home with my Magic 50 Miles for the day.